12 FACT AGAINST FICTION. 



its beautiful feathers, and to mark its age or 

 condition — the latter quite necessary, as giving an 

 insight into the amount of artificial feeding the 

 bird had receivedj if any had been deemed neces- 

 sary ; but now men, in the most unsportsman-like 

 manner, hasten forth to murder and to destroy 

 all that rises or runs before them, unheeding 

 sex, condition, or future utility in the kitchen. 

 Smashed limbs fall in a cloud of dislodged 

 feathers, the result of three or four barrels being 

 zealously fired into the same bird. '^Cooking 

 distance, if you please," used to be called out if 

 a man blcAV a bird to pieces ; but now there is no 

 restraint — all is to be killed anyhow, and as fast 

 as possible, and when killed the game is flung 

 down like a heap of rubbish. It is curious and 

 very distasteful to me to observe this, and to see 

 how soon keepers, as they are called, fall into 

 the lamentable ways of their betters. At the end 

 of a turnip-field the men are apt to assemble, 

 each flinging from his stifling pockets the birds 

 and their ruffled feathers unsmoothed, the limbs, 

 set in their last agony of death, not pulled 

 straight, but everything tossed together in san- 

 guinary disparagement, -— the birds flung thus 



